


Kind of Something

by amnesiac_droplet



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 15:44:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4630908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amnesiac_droplet/pseuds/amnesiac_droplet





	Kind of Something

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dayadhvam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dayadhvam/gifts).



The police department’s had a few busy weeks lately, what with the destruction and chaos and the Avatar gone to another realm, which some criminals seem to have mistaken for an excuse to do as they please. Nobody’s in a very good mood. Mako feels almost guilty to enjoy this turn of events. He’s doing his job again, where he knows he’s being useful. He doesn’t have much of a personal life, but that suits him just fine. Luckily, these days he has a family to come back to, because Bolin’s gone wherever his girlfriend is right now, and clearly doing very well seeing how he barely remembers to write anymore—children grow up and all, but it’s not like Mako’s the one moving around or anything. His grandmother, though, won't let him crawl into bed until he's had a decent meal. It makes him wonder how did he manage before.

"Firebending isn't optimal for a cop," Beifong had told him back when he had the weird idea of presenting her a job offer. "Even moreso, it's a liability. I'm not rejecting you, but if you're serious," and he still remembers her staring right at him, "you'll have to work around it."

Beifong must've seen something in Mako even he wasn't sure he had, because she took a gamble on him. Embarrassingly, he didn't realize it was such a big deal at first. Now, he's going to make sure he lives up to the hopes Beifong had in him, whatever those were. Living up to someone's expectations isn't a problem Mako's had in the past--his parents didn't live long enough and Bolin always took for granted that Mako could do anything. Looking back, that last one was too big a responsibility. Working to make someone proud of him, on the other hand, is the motivation he never knew he wanted. It helps that Beifong won't take any crap, so any praise coming from her is the real thing. Not that there's a lot of it, at any rate. But the small gestures that come every once in a while are the meaningful ones. Like her almost-smiling when Mako finishes a report a day earlier, and he's sure that for a moment there's a pleased lilt in her voice and an unusual spark in her eyes.

Put it like that, one would almost think there's something other than a somewhat-close-but-respectful work relationship going on. One would be wrong, because crushing on his boss is a particularly bad turn of events even by Mako's standards, and rather than make himself worthy of her approval, it would obliterate it so far into the negative numbers it couldn't be measured. So it's not happening.

And even if it did, it would come to nothing. As little as Mako cares about workplace gossip, he's heard some about nearly everyone other than Beifong and himself, the officially married-to-the-job duo in the Department. Either she really doesn't care about intimate relationships or she keeps them way low profile and out of everyone's eyes, which is just as well because it's not their business. And that's it.

It wouldn't be that bad, except lately Beifong keeps asking him to do things. Working together. It's all very reasonable, seeing how he's set himself up as the trusty, driven underling whose work hours are nothing if not flexible. Any day now, she's going to ask him to stay late when they're the only ones in the office, and who knows what fever dreams that's going to cook up in his head.

In an uncharacteristic move, he takes the next free day that comes his way. He's probably working too hard, anyway. He could do something inconsequential like going to see if pro-bending's still a thing and if somebody happens to remember him. He's out in the streets when dawn has barely broken, because relaxation isn't even in his vocabulary anymore.

Mako's waiting to cross the street, pondering what to do at these hours, when a short, bald guy sidles up to him. The guy looks familiar. Mako remembers him in some old robes instead of an inconspicuous suit, standing in a corner and fear-mongering about the calamities sure to follow now that the Avatar had left the world. Those whackjobs are as fast-sprouting and short-lived and welcome as fungus. Too bad they aren't technically breaking the law, so Mako couldn't toss them in the nearest cell.

"You're the funny-eyebrow cop." Doom guy smiles smugly. He must remember Mako glaring at him as a warning. But he hasn’t come just to say hi.

"What about it?"

Doom guy looks away casually. "I bet you haven't heard this one. Lao's getting back in business all quiet-like."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Doom guy frowns. "I don't mean _that_ Lao, I mean Quick-Hand Lao."

Now that's interesting. "I thought he had retired."

Mako may not have heard the name in quite some time, but there’s no way he’d forget it. He flashes back to the Beifong standing there irradiating rage when there was no doubt Quick-Hand Lao had slipped away from them, Mako hovering awkwardly around because he couldn’t exactly say _Don’t worry, we’ll get him anyway, somehow_.

"Well, one of his men showed up to hear me—but you don’t care about that, don’t you. He let it slip up he had a new job.” Doom guy lifts his eyebrows. “So? What’s it worth to you?”

This situation requires finesse and Mako has never been good at it.

"You're a concerned citizen, aren't you? I'm sure you'd like to know the police is on your side."

Doom guy gets shifty. There's always a possibility one of Lao's men had ended up listening to him by chance, but Mako will place his bets on doom guy favoring the wrong kind of company. He's probably nothing more than a charlatan, but the wrong company gets tired of charlatans faster than law-abiding people, and handles them in far more drastical ways. So doom guy makes his choice.

"Of course." He moves closer and whispers an address. Then he scurries away before anybody sees him talking to a cop.

Doom guy may be mistaken or--more unlikely--may have acted as someone's pawn, but he was honest for once. Mako makes his choice. He stands before Beifong's door before she's out to work.

Sure, he found out because he was lucky, but that's the way things work out in his job. They didn't have any luck when they went up against Lao last time, and now the tides seem to have turned, they must act immediately.

Or so he thinks, but right then Beifong opens the door and her hair's down and Mako can't remember if he's ever seen her with her hair down, but that's a moot question because he's never _seen_ her like this. She's showered minutes ago and even as she looks inquiringly up at him, he's distracted by a damp strand of hair clinging to her cheekbone. He does manage to keep himself from doing something absurd like brushing it away.

"What's it?" Her question snaps him back to earth.

"Quick-Hand Lao seems to be back in business," Mako blurts out, surprising himself by making sense.

Beifong lets him in. He sits by the edge of the couch while she leans on the counter and drinks her tea. Mako explains about his encounter with doom guy and thinks that her place has the same kind of neat-but-empty feel his place used to have when he lived alone. Maybe he should invite her for dinner sometime.

Mako mentally slaps himself before he says that out loud.

"I'll check that out." Beifong nods in approval, and Mako feels a bit warmer inside. It's her case, it's always been, and she deserves all the recognition for it. He doesn't want to glom on to it, he just speaks without thinking.

"I'll go too. If you don't mind."

"No," she says a bit absently, probably thinking of what's going to happen if the lead turns out to be true.

"I should call my grandmother," he remembers. "So she won't expect me back for lunch."

He does, and he doesn't need to have her in front of him to see her frowning.

"That woman's too hard on you. It's your day off."

Mako could explain, but that's time best invested elsewhere. One thing's sure: if he had the slightest scrap of delusion about how inviting Beifong home was the slightest scrap of a good idea, it's gone now.

Unfortunately, if there's one thing stakeouts do well, it's being boring. One's always sitting in some mostly-dry corner of some docks overlooking some warehouse, because that's the kind of place where lowlife criminals keep gathering, mostly staring at the same spot. Sooner or later, one's mind will start wandering. If one's good at it, one has said mind trained to return the moment one's eyes register any movement, allowing for both wandering and watching. But it may be a long time until somebody shows up, or one has to pee, or anything that breaks up the monotony.

This could last the whole day. Maybe he should've stayed home.

So there's lots of thinking. When one's crouching way too close to one's boss and listening to her breathing with too much clarity, that tends to nudge the direction of said thinking toward unwelcome places.

Like, well, the way Beifong had to have noticed something by now. If one were in a mood to come up with wild theories, one could even say she didn’t mind him crushing on him, but that made no sense and was wildly inappropiate.

“Is there something going on? Right now? Between us?”

 _Great._ He’d done it. In his mind, Bolin materialized back at home and kicked the door open. _I can’t believe it! You’re supposed to be the reasonable one! I’m so glad I left before I had any more of your bad influence._

Beifong shrugged. “Kind of something, at this point. It depends on what else we do about it. Hey, you think those guys—no, it seems not.”

“So—you don’t—about me—” Really, Mako wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but he hoped she’d have a better idea.

“Well, I’m the boss. Making the first movement would complicate things. Sure, I could put an end to it for good—and if you really want that, I will. It’d be the right, proper thing.”

He had to ask. “So why haven’t you?”

“Because sometimes people screw up and still manage to come out on top.” She glances at him and sort-of-smiles. “My sister did it once. It took me a much longer time to realize that it happens. The trick of it is finding out when you’ll get away with it.”

That’s way too much for Mako to process. As things happen, before he has time to think it over for long, a suspicious group of people sneak into the warehouse, requiring closer examination.


End file.
